Search for asylum seeker mistakenly released from prison enters third day

The search for an asylum seeker mistakenly released from prison has entered its third day as police revealed where he was last seen.

Ethiopian national Hadush Kebatu was jailed for 12 months in September for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl and was wrongly freed from HMP Chelmsford on Friday morning instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre.

The Metropolitan Police, which is leading the manhunt, said Kebatu was last seen in Hackney, east London, just before 8pm on Friday.

It issued CCTV of him in a library in the borough’s Dalston Square two hours earlier, at 6pm, carrying his belongings in a “distinctive white bag with pictures of avocados on it” and still wearing his prison-issue grey tracksuit top and bottoms.

The migrant, who had been living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, when he assaulted the girl, took a train from Chelmsford to Stratford, east London, arriving at 1.12pm on Friday and then had taken “a number of journeys” across London and had “access to funds”.

It is understood that Kebatu, who crossed the Channel in a small boat to enter the UK on June 29, left prison with an amount of personal money but was not given a discharge grant to cover subsistence costs.

A delivery driver described seeing Kebatu return to HMP Chelmsford in a “very confused” state “four or five times”, only to be turned away by prison staff and directed to the railway station.

The driver, named only as Sim, told Sky News that he saw Kebatu come out of the prison saying: “Where am I going? What am I doing?”

He said that Kebatu knew that he should be deported but the prison staff were “basically sending him away” and saying to him, “Go, you’ve been released, you go”.

The driver said: “He kept scratching his head and saying, ‘where do I go, where do I go?’

“The fourth or fifth time (he went into the reception) he was starting to get upset, he was getting stressed.

“I’m not sticking up for the guy, but in my eyes, he was trying to do the right thing.

“He knew he was getting deported, but he didn’t know where he was going or how he should get there.”

Commander James Conway, of the Metropolitan Police, said in a direct appeal to Kebatu: “We want to locate you in a safe and controlled way.

“You had already indicated a desire to return to Ethiopia when speaking to immigration staff; the best outcome for you is to make contact directly with us by either calling 999 or reporting yourself to a police station.”

A prison officer has been taken off duties to discharge prisoners while an investigation takes place.

In the 12 months to March this year, 262 prisoners were released in error in England and Wales, according to the prison service’s annual digest – that was a 128% increase from 115 the previous year, with 233 involving prisons.

A report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, after an inspection in January and February 2024, said HMP Chelmsford faced “considerable pressures” because of “national capacity issues” while suffering staff shortfalls in reception and the pre-release team.

Kebatu, who arrived in the UK on a small boat eight days before the incidents in July, was convicted of making inappropriate comments to a 14-year-old girl before he tried to kiss her on July 7 – just eight days after he arrived in the country on a small boat.

His trial also heard that a day later, he sexually assaulted a woman by trying to kiss her, putting his hand on her leg and telling her she was pretty.

The woman later called 999 after she spotted him being inappropriate to the same teenage girl who he sexually assaulted while she was wearing her school uniform.

The migrant was found guilty of five offences after a three-day trial at Chelmsford and Colchester magistrates’ courts in September.

The court heard at his sentencing hearing that it was his “firm wish” to be deported.

In court, Kebatu gave his date of birth through a translator as being in December 1986 making him 38 years old, although Essex Police have said their records state his date of birth is in December 1983 making him 41.

Kebatu’s crime led to protesters and counter-protesters taking to the streets in Epping, Essex, and eventually outside hotels housing asylum seekers across the country.